Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Everybody else is doing it...

Since I've seenthisinvariousplaces on my daily rounds, I figured I'd play, too. (The list, for the two of you that didn't know, is the "100 Best SF/Fantasy Books" based on a poll of NPR listeners. The meme that's going about its to bold the ones you've read.)

1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams3. Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert
5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin
6. 1984, by George Orwell7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov
9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan
13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov
17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss
19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick 22. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King (Only the first two.)
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
25. The Stand, by Stephen King26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury28. Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman
30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells
40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny
41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings
42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson
44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White
48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
49. Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke50. Contact, by Carl Sagan51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons
52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson54. World War Z, by Max Brooks
55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett61. The Mote In God’s Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind
63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist
67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard
69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb
70. The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne
73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore74. Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
77. The Kushiel’s Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey
78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin
79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson
82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks
84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart
85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher
87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe
88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn
89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan
90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock
91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge
94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov
95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson
96. Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony
100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis

It's obvious that this was a poll of NPR listeners. I mean, The Handmaid's Tale? Really? (And was The Road actually SF or Fantasy?)

While 40 probably means I've been neglecting other important reading I refuse to feel bad about it.

As for editorializing, I would put The Dragonlance Chronicles on the list before Drizzt's story. I could only push myself through 2.5 books in The Foundation series before my inner individual said enough. That put me off Asimov, probably for life.

You can tell it's a NPR list, because at least 2 of the books became Trilogies, (Ringworld and Mote), and they were also part of a "Universe" (Known Space and Co-Dominium), plus then you have how Heinlein wove everything together towards the end of his life. Insufficient Facts spewed forth with some of your Tax Dollars, as usual.

I'm reading the third and final book of 43 atm, and I've read 7 of the 10 in 81, and those, along with 5, are some of the best fantasy I've ever read(and I'm a voracious reader), 69 deserves a mention as well.

The science-fiction side is a bit more barren, several questionable works, and missing authors like Greg Bear, Alastair Reynolds(a personal fav for hard sci-fi), and Peter F Hamilton.

"I think I see a bit of a theme though. Very few of those books have a strong moral tone. Most of the heros are more gray than black or white, and none are at all pro military."

Yep, because Starship Troopers isn't even remotely pro-military. :-P

Also a fair chunk of the books can be considered moral fables, though most of them probably hold to more gray sort of morality instead of black and white, Starship Troopers, Lord of the Rings, the Space Trilogy (by CS. Lewis), and some of the older books by Wells and Verne all stick to fairly black and white morality.

Like Tam said, it's an NPR list, the kind of people who (on their "game show" "Wait Wait!") assume that any fiction list simply must include Funnygut.I gave myself credit for a series if I read at least one item from it.I also think it should be noted that Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave does not belong on the list, neither SF nor F.

Considering that science fiction has been popular for well over 100 years (note the on-going debate over whether Jules Verne qualifies) such a list should take publication date into account.

To make sense of it, it is important to remember that while all SF is Fantasy, not all Fantasy is SF.

So while NPR lumps the genres as SF/Fantasy, Tam acknowledges the distinction in her final parenthetical and rhetorical sentence.

And it's an NPR poll; those folks as a group might not match up with the readership here as to what is science, fictional or otherwise. But fantasy? Well we *are* talking about the constituency of Obama '08.

The disaster theme from "The Road" is heavily influenced from John Christopher's "No Blade of Grass": definitely Sci-Fi.

You are lookig at a list generated by Science Fiction/Fantasy fans (I am guessing) from 50 to 60 years in age. When they would have started reading in the late 60s to early 70s, there was not much fantasy available at the time to your typical reader outside of the big cities. Think of a (by today's standards) tiny mall book store, with Sci-Fi and fantasy in the same rack and most of it Sci Fi. So that age range is going to hit the classics, but not too much else that is fantasy. When I moved to NYC for a couple of years in the late 1980s, I was stunned at was available.

Unless my tired eyes missed it, I don't see anything in Jack Vance's "The Dying Earth" series: of which at least the first book belongs.

The other one I would add would be Fritz Leibers :Fafhred in the Gray Mouser" series. They are the first truely great "low fantasy" that I recall being out. At least the first books came out in serialized form originally.

For myself, I have been reading apocalypse in progress tales.

The only one that is good enough, and Sci Fi enough to make the list is Paolo Bacigalupi's The Wind Up Girl. It is every bit as grim and comparable to Gibson's Neuromancer.

Guy Savidges' Kingdon of Four Rivers is also good, but I am not sure it cracks the top 100.

A list of SciFi/Fantasy that doesn't include any Edgar Rice Burroughs smacks of elitism and snobs. Every week I took my 50 cent allowance down to the local drugstore and and bought another book in the Tarzan/John Carter/Carson Napier/Pellucidar series and spent an hour or two lost in other worlds.

Selection bias. Sci-Fi goes waaaay-back. Before Herbert wrote "Dune", back in 1510 Garci Ordonez de Montalvo wrote "The Adventures of Esplandin," featuring an exotic island paradise inhabited by a Black Amazon warrior queen named Califia - with man eating griffons on rocky cliffs and shores where gold and pearls lay abundant - and from that we got the name California. With Columbus there occurred an impulse (albeit Spanish, but don't forget the Portuguese and Dutch) to boldly go where no man had gone before.Herbert didn't invent the word "dune" but Montalvo gave us California...

Russell1200 @0904: Speaking as a Science Fiction fan "from 50 to 60 years in age. ...{who} started reading in the late 60s to early 70s", and who started attending cons in the late 70s, I am pretty confident in saying that there's an awful lot of stuff that was put on that list by a bunch of damn kids who need to get off my lawn.

I was giving a hypothesis as to why the list was Sci-Fi heavy since it is a Sci-Fi and fantasy list. You have no argument from me that some of the choices are odd. My changes would not be your changes simply because of different reading preferences, but the very pattern of the list is odd.

I checked the demographics of NPR, and all I could come up with is a claim that their median age listener is 50. That is younger than I would have thought. The baby boom was after-the-fact stretched into the declining birth rate years of the 1960s, but even if you go with 1946 to 1964, and ignore that the birth rate is much heavier at the front end, you come up with 1955 as the mid-point and a median age somewhere around 56.

This is a poll of NPR listeners. I could have told you ahead of time that there weren't going to be many Baen authors on it, and it was going to be heavy on "Lit SF": Gaiman, Stephenson, and that sort.

I am actually shocked that there isn't a single Bruce Sterling book on there; he's the darling of the Smarter Than You set. He's a columnist for Wired, for Chrissake!

Having read, or started to read and put down due to disgust or lack of interest, most of this list - it seems a mish-mash of "What we were told were important books", and books that have been made into a movie/show/musical/tv series.

Calmer Half reports a lot of the books that I think are under the "what we were told were important" are mandatory in a "British education" - which explains how 1984 is on there, despite its big-brother message, and why they miscategorized Animal Farm from political humor to "SF/F".

While I'm not as high on the Mistborn trilogy as LBC, it is worth reading. Also, re: LawDog's remarks, any list that doesn't include at least The Stars My Destination isn't much of a list.

Given that it's an NPR list, I'm surprised Charles Stross isn't on there somewhere -- and that Lucifer's Hammer is. Also somewhat surprised at the absence of John Boyd (The Last Starship from Earth and The Rakehells of Heaven). Certainly anyone who's ever drawn a paycheck in a university system should appreciate Boyd (or, come to think of it, maybe not).

No Eddison, either. To be fair, I had trouble finding the Zimiamvia books back when I wanted to read them (almost 20 years ago). Appears to be easier now.

I recently finished Against All Things Ending (from the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant -- one more to go, in 2013, Lord willin' and the creek don't rise), and -- hoping this ain't a spoiler -- I don't think they're all going to settle down in Andelain and live happily ever after. :-)

Haven't read The Mists of Avalon, but I will confess to reading and liking the Darkover novels back in college.

I'll close by throwing out a recommendation for The Once and Future King. I rank it right behind Lord of the Rings.

wv: andenc, located just southeast of Orthanc off the Basingstoke roundabout.

While the list was likely generated by NPR fans, what I really wonder is if the staff did any judicious editing before the list was published. It's just a list of popular F&SF, so it shouldn't make any difference, right? But then I guess you never know.

Tam,You only read the first two of The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King ....You're lucky. I read them all and was trulu disappointed in the final chapter. King wrote some great stuff but the quality seems to have fallen off since he was run over.

"it seems a mish-mash of "What we were told were important books", and books that have been made into a movie/show/musical/tv series."

I doubt that many of the NPR listeners polled have read every book, or even most of the books, they voted for, so it's not a list of "FSF books I liked" as much as a list of "FSF books I've heard of". I'm just surprised A Handmaid's Tale isn't at the top of the list; none of these leftists will ever admit they either never read it or didn't like it. Starship Troopers made the list, alone of all RA Heinlein's works, and alone of all the military SF, because it was mis-adapted into a fairly controversial movie not so long ago as to be forgotten. (At least one other RAH novel was filmed, and much better, but I guess you've got to really be an old SF fan to remember The Puppet Masters.)

Jack Vance? Most of his best work is unfilmable, and was remaindered a long, long time ago. OTOH, "The Dragon Masters" would make an awesome film, even though more than half would have to be CGI.

Hollywood should have filmed The Stars My Destination before Nick Nolte, Jack Nicholson, etc., got old. They have plenty of younger male actors that could play the aimless drifter Gully Foyle without even acting, but none that could switch from that to the driven man who came back from the asteroids.

Little Fuzzies? I'm afraid of how that would come out of Hollywood. Think furry Smurfs.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Doc Smith, etc.: Pure escapism. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I bet the typical NPR listener thinks there is, and so won't admit to liking such works unless she can find some intellectual hook to justify reading them.

Also, these authors, and many other great ones missing from the list, were dead or retired before the baby boomers learned to read. If you do your own looking for good books, you'll find them, but the fad-followers wouldn't.

Markm, remember what C.S. Lewis said about people who decry "escapism." "What kind of person is against people escaping? Why, a jailer!"

I think you're off on the generational timing. I'm a boomer, and bought new-printed copies of Burroughs, Smith, Clement, and Piper in the sixties when I was in Junior High School. There were also all of those Gnome Press editions in the public library.